Minecraft Antarctica

Ever wanted to explore Antarctica from the comfort of your own computer? Ever
felt that the real world is insufficiently cube-based? This is the answer.

This is a 1:1000 scale recreation of the entire Antarctic continent (and
outlying islands) in Minecraft, based on the data from the
Bedmap-2
project. The vertical scale has been exaggerated by a factor of 10.

Playing

You’ll need a copy of Minecraft, which can be purchased direct from
minecraft.net.

You can either download the map file, or connect to a server. There is a server
running Minecraft Antarctica generously provided by the folks at
Infinicraft. Simply start Minecraft, choose Multiplayer,
then Direct Connect, then enter the server address antarctica.infmc.net.

If you want to run your own copy, Minecraft Antarctica comes as a custom map
file. You can download the map file here. You’ll
then need to unzip this file to the right location on your computer. On a Mac,
this location is ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/saves. On Windows,
it’s C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\minecraft\saves.

You should then be able to play in the map by starting Minecraft, choosing
“Singleplayer”, and selecting the map (named “Antarctica”) from the list.

Exploring

You should start at Rothera Point on Adelaide Island (67°34’S, 68°08’W), the
location of the main British Antarctic Survey
base, and quite a scenic area.

The map defaults to Creative Mode, with cheats enabled. This means that you can
fly: tap the spacebar twice to toggle flying, and move up and down with space
and shift. You can also teleport, which greatly speeds up moving around the map.

To teleport, press T to bring up the chat console. The type the teleport
command /tp <x> <y> <z>, replacing <x>, <y> and <z> with the
coordinates of the point you want to teleport to. Some example locations:

The South Pole (90°S) /tp 3335 108 3333

Beardmore Glacier (83°45’S, 171°E) /tp 3439 83 4004

Mount Erebus (77°31’S, 167°09’E) /tp 3636 104 4661

Larsen B remnant (65°58’S, 62°23’W) /tp 986 80 2105

Let me know if you find anywhere else interesting or beautiful!

Known issues

There are a few known issues with the map.

The map stops completely at 60°S; if you go past this you’ll fall off the
edge of the world.

The sun passes directly overhead, wherever you are on the map. In reality,
at the south pole, the sun never gets more than 23° above the horizon.

Ice crystals are generally hexagonal, not cubic. In order to form
cubes, we need temperatures below
around -100°C (-150°F), but the lowest recorded temperature in Antarctica
was -89°C (-128°F) at Vostok in 1983.

The map is generated at 1:1000 scale, so no animals appear. In reality, the
Antarctic coastline is home to a variety of species of birds and
pinnipeds.